Chapter 48 – Battle of the Midway
Sunday, July 26, 2308
As Stanwood and Von Kalt approached the first tee at Mount Murray Golf Course, a sharp and active old fellow rose from the bench. “I was expecting more of you,” he said, smiling.
“Sorry to disappoint,” Stanwood replied, extending his hand.
MacPhail took Stanwood’s hand in both of his and gave it a firm shake. MacPhail was tall and thin, but he seemed strong and healthy.
Von Kalt nodded to the bodyguard slash caddy standing nearby.
MacPhail glanced at his watch. “Right on time,” he said.
“You were expecting me?” Stanwood asked.
“I’ve been expecting you for almost twenty years, son. Of course, I had no idea it would be you, whoever you are, but I knew this day was coming, without a doubt.”
“Then you’ll understand my desire to cut to the chase.”
“Do you play?” MacPhail asked, ignoring Stanwood’s impatience.
“I do, occasionally,” Stanwood answered.
“Fancy a round.” Angus gestured to his cart and a second set of clubs, clearly rentals, tucked into the small bed of the cart.
Stanwood rubbed his forehead and forced a smile. “Sure, why not?”
“You can tell a lot about a man by the way he plays golf.”
“They do say that.”
Over the course of the next eighteen holes, Stanwood held his own against the aged MacPhail. They traded jokes, clever and insightful observations and war stories about the recently deceased Dr. Fox.
At the clubhouse, Stanwood covered the tab, and at the end of the match, which he lost badly, he also covered the overpriced green fees.
After a massive lunch of steak and lobster, with no mention of Manx kippers, Stanwood again picked up the check. He’d genuinely enjoyed the old man’s company, but the requirements of hospitality had clearly come and gone.
Angus was still one step ahead, however, and beat Joe to the proverbial punch. “Gentlemen,” Angus included Von Kalt as much as possible, making eye contact and in general treating him as a friend, not a servant. “If you’ll join me on the cigar patio, I’d like to address the reason you’ve traveled all this way.” Ironically, MacPhail hadn’t acknowledged or even spoken to his own bodyguard during the entire encounter.
Once ensconced in a leather chair, in a room with a completely opened west-facing wall, MacPhail handed out cigars.
“You know, when Andrew first asked me to take on this responsibility, I truly had no idea just what he had in mind.
“You see, I knew him as a youngster, that bright red hair and fire in his eyes to match. I knew his father and Grandfather, who’d been classmates with my old man. So, we go back a wee little bit.
“When he first entrusted me with the package, I honestly didn’t know what to think. I was honored and every day since then has been blessed.
“However, every blessing, every gift, every act of grace, comes with a price. I’ve paid mine; I know I have. I’ll go to meet Saint Peter with a clear conscience, which is more than most can say.
“But I’m rambling and you’ve been more than patient. Indulgent, I’d dare say.”
Angus fell silent for a few moments and then leaned forward. “You’re not wired, are you, son?” MacPhail answered his own question. “No, I didn’t think so. I haven’t seen your eyes doing any of that flickering nonsense.” Angus leaned forward, examining Stanwood’s pupils. “You ain’t got any lights going on in there either, as far as I can make out.”
“No, Sir.” Stanwood said. “I take it you aren’t networked yourself?”
“I’m old school. We don’t believe in anything stronger than a fermented mash of barley and rye. A bunch of computerized-what-nots messing with your noggin… No, thank you.”
Stanwood smiled. “I know a couple of fellows who might disagree with us, but to be completely honest, it’s always scared the shit out of me.”
“You don’t seem like the type that scares easy.”
“Stupid scares me. Putting something in you head that doesn’t belong there… Well, sir, I’d think you were just asking for trouble.”
Angus sat up straight, looked around the room and took a deep breath. “Speaking of which.” He leaned back in the luxurious leather chair. “Is there anything you’d like to ask me?”
Stanwood smiled. “Yes, actually. I’ve heard the Manx kippers are amazing. Would you agree?”
Angus narrowed his eyes. He waited. He blinked.
He turned his head a little bit and sat up straighter.
“The Manx kipper rouge, I mean” Stanwood corrected himself. “They’re good here?”
Angus laughed, clapped his hands and rocked back in the chair, grinning broadly. “Yes, yes indeed. Best smoked herring you’ll ever eat. Fresh in from over in Foxdale, just down the road.”
“Imagine the coincidence,” Stanwood said.
Angus laughed heartily and waved one of the servants over. “I dropped off a chest with the manager this morning. Could you have it brought around, please? I think we’re ready for that now.”
“Yes, sir,” the waiter answered.
Angus gingerly rose from his chair. “If you’ll excuse me for just a moment, my bladder is screaming.”
Stanwood raised an eyebrow.
“Oh don’t worry. I’ll be right back. I wouldn’t miss this for the world.”
Angus had only just stepped into the nearby restroom when the waiter returned with a heavy chest. He hadn’t bothered to try and carry it and instead wheeled it out on a serving tray.
Stanwood waited almost ten minutes before sending Von Kalt into the restroom to retrieve the old timer. The bodyguard was nowhere to be seen.
Von Kalt promptly returned, as the restroom was predictably empty.
They both looked at the chest, growing more nervous with each passing moment, imagining a rather large bomb sitting before them.
The manager noticed their quandary and dutifully came over, inquiring as to their state of being.
Stanwood asked if Mr. MacPhail was still on the grounds.
The manager replied in the affirmative, a reflected look of fear and panic giving way to one of calm serenity, which he clearly favored. He briskly led the stupefied Stanwood and Von Kalt to another section of the clubhouse and introduced them to a completely different cranky old miser. The two men actually looked a bit alike, but Von Kalt suspected that had to do more with their shared age than genetic similarity.
“You’re Angus MacPhail?” Stanwood asked.
“Have been all my life,” he replied.
“Did you schedule a tee time this morning, sir?”
“I did. Damnedest thing though, came down with a bad case of indigestion last night after dinner.”
“That’s cause you were up all night jawing with that fellow from the old country.” A woman interjected.
“I’d like to ask you sir, do you know Doctor Fox?”
“Well, of course I do. It was him who kept me up till the wee hours playing cards and swapping fish stories.
“He even mentioned that you fellows would be joining him for a swing of the irons and asked if I’d like to join him. I was already feeling a mighty bit uncomfortable, so I begged off. Even gave him my slot. I think he was right behind me, so it was a small matter.”
“Doctor Andrew Fox?” Stanwood asked.
“Alexander,” MacPhail replied. ”Andrew is his son. The boy lives out your way, if I’m not mistaken. Real shame.”
“Yes. I’ve heard, a right shame what happened.”
“A million people, in one afternoon. That’s gotta be the most heinous atrocity I think I’ve ever heard of.”
“The latest estimates put it at one point three.”
“What a shame. It wasn’t just the Fox boy, that’s for certain. The culture is to blame. Most folks feel the Republic has taken a dark turn.”
“Is that so?”
“It is son. Lis
ten here; ever since you folks introduced those Gates of Citizenship, well, Europe thinks you have gone a little bit crazy. With the labor farms and the executions, and all that nonsense.” MacPhail scowled and turned away from the younger man.
Stanwood rolled his eyes. “At least we still believe in private enterprise. Europe’s slow submersion into socialism and bureaucratic control is nauseating, and I work for the government.”
“I’ve heard all that sonny. I think it’s time for you and your manservant to push on.”
“I’m sorry to interrupt your dinner, sir. Excuse me.”
Stanwood and Von Kalt promptly returned to the cigar parlor.
“That wasn’t Andrew’s father,” Stanwood said. “Alexander Fox died ten years ago.”
“You’re sure?” Von Kalt asked. “He looked like he might be.”
“I was at the funeral,” Stanwood answered.
“So, if it wasn’t his father… Uncle? Brother? What?”
The chest remained on the silver cart, right where they’d left it.
With a growl and a curse, Stanwood flipped the latch and threw open the lid. There were three items inside the chest. A key tied to a red ribbon. A small gift-wrapped box and a card.
Stanwood reached in and lifted out the card. He read the front aloud. “What’s the Secret of the Midway?”
He opened it. “Preparation.”
Von Kalt laughed, “What?”
Stanwood lifted out the key, on its red loop. A card on the ribbon read USS Midway: Forward Hold.
“And finally,” Stanwood lifted out the small gift-wrapped tin. He peeled the paper back to reveal the image of smoked herring. “Manx Kippers: red herring, hysterical.” Stanwood dropped it back into the chest.
“I wouldn’t eat those, if I were you.” Von Kalt smiled.
At sunset, the government cruiser arrived at the Republic’s maritime museum in the Virginia sky. Dozens of ancient warships had been repurposed as tourist attractions, outfitted with anti-gravity drives and anchored in celestial airspace over the east coast shipyards that spawned them. Von Kalt suspected that, sooner or later, these relics would be ground up and recast into a terillium alloy.
The Midway stood between the Enterprise and the Constellation. Von Kalt thought the ships looked small, relative to some of the urban sprawl of the new terillium age. The east coast of the republic had long ago become the equivalent of a patchwork quilt, draped over what was once, long, long ago, pristine shoreline.
On the eastern seaboard, entire stretches of the actual earth had not seen sunlight in over a hundred years. It was a well-known fact that you could walk from Virginia Beach to Boston, without ever touching the ground, if one were so inclined. Von Kalt thought it inevitable that sooner or later, every last bit of metal would be incorporated into some sort of gravity-fighting metallic-mixture.
Some likened mankind’s discovery of anti-gravity technology to the hatching of butterflies. But butterflies are still flies and flies still come from worms. The more cynical members of society lost no time connecting man’s continued pollution of the skyline with the metaphor of pestilence.
The rotting derelicts had been consigned to a slow death, fit for nothing more than the fleecing of those poor saps with excess revenue and deficits of intellect. Von Kalt sighed.
The deputy director had arranged for the management personal to meet them, and they were escorted to the locked doors of the forward hold, in a section of the ship that was off-limits to the regular tours.
Stanwood asked the ship’s crew to leave before he approached the hatch. There were two locks on the heavy metal hatch. Stanwood swiped his hand across the digital unit’s sensor, activating it.
“Secret of the Midway?” the display blinked.
Stanwood typed “Preparation” into the terminal.
The digital lock’s indicators switched from red to green.
Stanwood fished the key from his pocket and slipped it into the second lock. He turned it. Nothing happened.
He reached out and took a hold of the large wheel at the center of the door, the heavy-duty knob that, once turned, would open the storage area beyond. He turned it slowly and gently.
The door hissed as the pressure equalized, then the seal popped and the metal hatch swung outward, toward them.
Stanwood pulled it fully open, triggered the overhead lights and stepped into the hold. Von Kalt followed. The space was filled with office-style storage boxes.
Stanwood pulled the cover from one and fished out a random file. “The aggregate cost of over fishing in Alaska, circa 2245 - 2279.”
Von Kalt opened a box. “Diabetes and your Pet. Oh, this looks good, The Continuing Fight against Copyright Infringement Behind The Great Wall. Smells like more Manx kippers.”
“What the hell?” Stanwood said. “Why would he go to all the trouble?”
A loud ping ripped through the hold and a hissing sound filled the empty space that had earlier been only silence.
“What was that?” Von Kalt asked.
Two more Pings and the hiss rose to a dull roar. The room at the very front of the ship was shaped like a triangle. The point, directly opposite them was at the prow of the ship, but well above what was once the waterline. The room had been designed for the feeding of supplies, deeper into hard to reach forward sections and the outward swinging doors of had been pinned over a hundred years ago. If it hadn’t already been dark out, a seam at the center of the far wall would have become visible, where boxes didn’t obscure it.
“Oh shit.” Stanwood turned and scrambled for the door behind them.
Von Kalt also realized what was happening, but they were both too late.
The hatch leading to that section had been closed and locked for who-knows-how-long. The ship had been an ocean-going vessel and designed keeping water out. It had not designed to be pressurized from the inside, for service at higher elevations. The aircraft carrier had been retrofitted somewhat, to accommodate civilian tourists, but Stanwood’s foray had not been properly prepared for.
Neither man had the opportunity to appreciate the irony of the password, before the Virginia sky corrected the pressure imbalance and ripped open the hold, venting its contents into the purple evening sky.